Joan Miró

JOAN MIRÓ I FERRÀ (Barcelona, 1893 - Palma de Mallorca, 1983).
Series "Enrajolats", 1979.
Etching with aquatint on Arches paper, copy 5/30.
Signed and numbered in pencil.
The series "Enrajolats" is made up of 7 etchings with aquatint whose print run is 55 copies, numbered from 1 to 30 and from H.C. I to H.C. XV.
Printer Joan Barbarà.
Edited by Galeria Maeght of Barcelona.
Measurements: 55 x 75 cm (print); 77 x 97 cm (frame).

The series "Enrajolats" is inspired by the trencadís technique that Gaudí applied to mosaics. As a tribute to the Catalan architect, Miró made two related series in 1979: Gaudí series and Enrajolats series. The Gaudí technique of reusing ceramic fragments, which the modernist genius incorporated into his monumental work, is evoked by Miró through the juxtaposition of different fields of color that, like tesserae, form intermediate beings, halfway between fantasy and reality. Miró, like Gaudí, also took nature as his main source of inspiration in order to give his creatures an imaginary morphology.

Joan Miró was trained in Barcelona, and made his individual debut in 1918, in the Dalmau Galleries. In 1920 he moved to Paris and met Picasso, Raynal, Max Jacob, Tzara and the Dadaists. There, under the influence of surrealist poets and painters, he matures his style; he tries to transpose surrealist poetry to the visual, based on memory, fantasy and the irrational. His third exhibition in Paris, in 1928, was his first great triumph: the Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired two of his works. He returned to Spain in 1941, and that same year the museum dedicated a retrospective to him that would mean his definitive international consecration. Throughout his life he received numerous awards, such as the Grand Prizes of the Venice Biennale and the Guggenheim Foundation, the Carnegie Prize for Painting, the Gold Medals of the Generalitat de Catalunya and the Fine Arts, and was named Doctor Honoris Causa by the universities of Harvard and Barcelona. His work can currently be seen at the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona, as well as at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, the MoMA in New York, the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, the National Gallery in Washington, the MNAM in Paris and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo.